


Brief Candles

by thisbluespirit



Category: Daisy Dalrymple - Carola Dunn
Genre: 1920s, 500 prompts, Blood, Blood Loss, Community: 100fandoms, Community: hc_bingo, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:46:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27180107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: "You couldn't have lost this much blood.  You'd be dead..."
Relationships: Daisy Dalrymple/Alec Fletcher
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5
Collections: Hurt/Comfort Bingo - Round 11, The 100 Multifandom Challenge, Whumptober 2020





	Brief Candles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleurting](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurting/gifts).



> Written for Whumptober 2020 #10 "Blood Loss", hc_bingo square "Blood loss", 100fandoms prompt #20 (discover), and 500 prompts #186 "nothing could bleed that much - Alec/Daisy" for delacourtings.

This wing of the house had been disused for some time. It didn’t even have gas lighting, let alone electric. It should also have been empty, but Daisy was sure she had heard a noise from the hall below.

She gripped her lantern and descended the elderly stairs with care, feeling uncomfortably like the heroine of a gothic novel, up until she encountered something small and alive – a mouse? A rat? – at her feet, squeaked loudly, and tumbled down the last few steps, the lantern flying out of her hold. Its light died, leaving her in darkness.

After lying there for a good few seconds, the stuffing well and truly knocked out of her, Daisy pulled herself up, bruised, and her pride sorely dented. She felt around the dusty flagstones for the lantern, only to try and grasp hold of broken glass. She pulled her hand back, hugging it to her chest. She’d cut herself, worse luck. She supposed that one advantage of the dark was that she couldn’t see the blood and make things worse by fainting on the spot, but her knees were already going tingly, and not in a good way.

She stayed still for a moment and listened, but whatever or whoever she had heard before, there was now only silence. But, then, if anyone had been up to no good down here, her careless tumble would have been enough to alert the dead. _Drat._ She kept close hold of her arm, ignoring the wetness against her fingers as hard as she could, and tried to rise, only to fall back with a cry, her ankle failing painfully beneath her. She sat again heavily. It might only be a twist, but she couldn’t exactly walk about on it to find out in the dark.

She resorted to calling for help and hoped Scotland Yard was at hand.

Daisy was beginning to wonder if Alec had gone back to the main wing, oblivious to her shouts, when she heard steps above her and turned in time to see the small flare of a match being lit, illuminating Alec’s face.

Daisy breathed out in relief and watched him descend, carefully shielding the match as he went. She was fairly sure even from this distance that his eyebrows were looking particularly fierce.

“Daisy!” he said, and then crouched down beside her, the match going out before he could examine her more closely. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

“I cut my hand.” As he lit another match, she nodded towards her right ankle. “I seem to have done my ankle in as well. Otherwise just knocks and bruises. Sorry.”

Alec shifted nearly and held out his hand to her. “Let’s have a look –” He stopped, his gaze on the floor. “Good Lord. Daisy!” He snatched at her injured hand, to her surprise, too swiftly for her to take the precaution of looking firmly in the other direction. He relaxed momentarily, and wrapped a large and clean hanky around it. He frowned at her, as if looking for some other source of injury. “You’re sure you’re not hurt anywhere else? Bumped your head, perhaps?”

Daisy was feeling too woozy to shake the head in question in response, and leant back against the wall, hoping she wasn’t going to faint or be sick. It really was too bad that she couldn’t be fearless at the sight of blood. It seemed even worse when it was her own. “N-no.”

“Then where did the rest of this come from?”

Daisy blinked and wondered if he’d gone mad. “The rest of what?” She inevitably had to follow his gaze to see what he meant – that was the problem with ‘satiable curiosity – and saw, just before the second match died, a positive pool of blood on the flagstones beside her.

“But you couldn’t have lost this much blood,” he continued, which she thought was extremely unhelpful, when the whole room was already doing quite peculiar things. “You’d be –” He stopped.

Daisy, now carefully averting her gaze, swallowed and managed to recover herself. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, dear. Who is it? We did think no one had seen Cousin Vincent for ages.”

“This is supposed to be a nice evening out,” said Alec. “Daisy!”

She heard him stand, and then the sound of the match being struck; saw the stairs illuminated faintly, weird shadows thrown against them. There was another softer sound, as he pulled back the old hanging on the panelled wall to the side of her, and then his sharp intake of breath.

“Daisy,” said Alec, as if she was the murderer, not an innocent soul who had happened to practically fall over yet another victim. “There’s a body behind here!”

She decided it was better to shut her eyes altogether, the wooziness making a return. “Is it Cousin Vincent?”

There was another pause and Alec said, eventually, “I’m not sure.”

Daisy swallowed. “I could _try_ and look.”

“Best not,” he said, sounding grim, which really didn’t help her queasiness.

“Alec,” she said. “Can we go?”

He crouched back down beside her immediately as she slumped against him, his voice suddenly sounding as if he was speaking from miles away. He put his arm around her firmly. “Daisy,” he said. “Darling. Can you stand if I help you?”

Darling? Daisy wished that she wasn’t feeling quite so awful, but at least pressed up against Alec’s best suit wasn’t the worst place to be, if she was. She gave a gulp, and then nodded, the rest of the world beginning to feel a little more real again.

“I’m not sure,” she said, remembering her ankle.

Alec carefully hauled her up, keeping his arm around her and when she caught at him, biting back a cry, her ankle failing her again, he told her he’d have to carry her up the stairs, a statement she found interesting enough to distract her from dead bodies, at least for a minute or so.

“Was he – it – they – wearing a brown checked suit?” she asked, her voice muffled against his jacket. “Because Cousin Vincent was. Lady Isobel said how awful it was when he first came in.”

“ _Daisy_ ,” Alec said, and then, “In that case I don’t think it can have been Cousin Vincent. We’d better find everyone else – once I’ve seen to you.”

“Good-oh,” said Daisy.


End file.
